Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Early this afternoon, another furry friend temporarily joined our family. He is a 5-week-old flying squirrel, weighing all of 26 grams, who was caught by a cat and deposited by that cat on his humans' kitchen floor. The lady had the good sense to put the baby in a shoebox with some soft rags and to warm the box on a heating pad set to "Low", and she brought the baby to me this afternoon.

I started him on antibiotics immediately, because cat saliva contains a bacterium called Pasturella, highly toxic to small mammals. Then I put 3 ccs of IV fluid under his skin - easy to do, as flying squirrels have such loose skin. (They need it for stretching themselves out like a kite and gliding from tree to tree.) He never complained.

By my calculations, based upon his weight, his stomach can hold at least 1.3 ccs of formula. He's drinking one, quite diluted. He will start full-strength formula sometime tomorrow, depending on how well he tolerates the diluted.

Meanwhile, he has both upper and lower teeth, the lower teeth being quite long already. So I've put a variety of munchies in his box with him, and am waiting to see how much of what is gone by morning. (Flying squirrels are nocturnal.)

He doesn't offer to bite, although he is quite shy.

His rescuer shyly confided that she had named him, "Lucky," so in her honor, he keeps that name.

He hasn't quite had a full physical yet, only a general looking over to make sure nothing horrible was wrong. I'm letting him relax a while before that ordeal. But so far, it looks to me like he will do very well, and be releasable in a few weeks.

This isn't Lucky; it's an adult flying squirrel. Lucky is gray with white undersides. And this picture is maybe three times lifesize..